Budget Resolutions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

There were two main challenges facing the Chancellor as he prepared for the Budget. One, on the eve of COP26, was to accelerate progress on tackling climate change, yet he had nothing to say on that. Instead, he cut air passenger duty on domestic flights, sending out entirely the wrong signal when he should have been investing in our rail services. It was clear that net zero could not have been further from his mind.

The other challenge was to take the pressure off working people. The pandemic has hit household incomes and widened inequality. The Government have also created a perfect storm of financial pressure with the universal credit cut, the national insurance rise, energy prices soaring and food prices rising at the fastest rate for more than a decade. People were looking to the Chancellor to help them out, yet, according to the Resolution Foundation, this Budget has increased the UK’s tax burden by £3,000 a year per household. The Office for Budget Responsibility has also confirmed that the Chancellor’s underlying strategy is to put even more pressure on council tax payers, with £5.3 billion more expected by 2025. The Budget is masking the fact that the Government are seeking to take even more out of people’s pockets. There is a suggestion that the average council tax bill will be well over £2,000 in the next few years.

The tax system has been rigged in favour of the wealthy, with bankers and Amazon getting a tax cut while ordinary people are being hit with national insurance. A huge opportunity to level the playing field has been missed. A survey by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers of 2,500 low-paid workers shows that over half of workers on less than £10 per hour are having to miss meals to pay everyday bills. Working people are being asked to pay more for less, and we are all paying the price for past Government failures.

On education, we know that there are 1,000 fewer Sure Start centres now than when the Conservatives came into power. The 75 family hubs are welcome, but after a decade-long failure to invest in children’s futures, this is clearly too little, too late. It also appears that schools are expected to fund the Government’s commitment to increasing teacher starter salaries to £30,000 from existing budgets. Schools simply do not have the money to meet that commitment. Also, the trumpeted rise in the budget for 16 to 19-year-olds is no rise at all when we look at the rising student numbers in that cohort. This comes at a time when the underfunding of colleges over recent years has already forced them to narrow their curriculum and put more pressure on an already stretched workforce. St Brendan’s College in my constituency has been trying really hard not to make those cuts, but the pressure is becoming very difficult for it to manage.

I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of an £1.8 billion fund to develop brownfield land, which, it is claimed, will bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use. I hope this means that Bristol will finally get the funding we need to unlock the development of Temple Quarter in the centre of the city. That could mean 10,000 new homes and 22,000 new jobs.

Finally, I would be failing in my duty as a west country MP if I did not mention cider. However, the 40-litre threshold for draught duty relief overwhelmingly favours large breweries. So on behalf of the smaller breweries and cider producers in the area, which often supply 30-litre kegs and would therefore be excluded from this measure, I urge a rethink from the Chancellor on this. Lowering the threshold to include any container would be a simple fix with huge benefits for independent businesses, and I am sure that my constituents would raise their glasses to the Chancellor if he did that.